Singing the Church

Mark Mummert, Director of Worship at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Houston, TX, and contributor to the latest Lutheran hymnal, recently wrote:

Singing an ever-widening repertoire of global hymnody is important for every Christian assembly, whether the congregation is monolithic or quite diverse. Singing words and music from other times and places reminds us that the church exists beyond the four walls of a building, beyond the confines of our city, state, or country, beyond the cultural make-up of one particular congregation or church, and beyond the boundaries of time and location. Singing global hymnody is not about trying to create a church that is more enticing to people of diverse cultural backgrounds, as if we were marketing Jesus to a particular demographic ("Let's sing an Asian hymn to get Asians to come to our church"!!) Nor is singing global hymnody a task that is motivated by somehow being "politically correct." Instead, singing global hymnody is about the incarnation -- it means that God comes enfleshed in diverse colors, tongues, and styles. We sing what the body of Christ -- the church -- looks like.

As a former worship pastor myself, I couldn't agree more. Now the question becomes: does such an incarnational view entail the incorporation of "praise and worship" music as well? Those who have worshipped with me know that my answer is an unashamed and emphatic "yes" - provided its done well. There is not much difference between the African American spirituals we are quick to fetishize, the Taize chants we love to commodify, and the repetitious, exuberantly meditative nature of many contemporary songs. That being said, here we must also inquire after the question of good taste, of fittingness, and of the capacity of certain songs to assist in the faithful unfolding of the Word of the true Gospel. Such considerations are always-already conditioned, but its worth wrestling with, I think.

In the meantime, I continue to long for the day (as well as to proleptically practice it) when a service might incorporate a praise song, an Arabic-Byzantine chant, an Appalachian folk melody, a spiritual, an old school hymn, all over a rock-inspired liturgical setting...coherently and beautifully. Not because we are trying to "be diverse;" because this is the diversity we have been given, and because music is beautiful. As Bach once wrote in the pages of his Calov Bible, Chronicles is filled with “Magnificent proof that, besides other functions of the divine service, music especially has also been ordered into existence by God’s spirit through David.” And next to II Chronicles 5: 13-14, he observed that “in devotional music, God with his grace is always present.”

The Time that Remains: A Meditation

2 Esdras 4.28 - So I stood and looked, and lo, a flaming furnace passed by before me, and when the flame had gone by I looked, and lo, the smoke remained.

Ezra wants to know if any time remains before the end, and whether he himself has any time remaining. The time that is left, says the angel, is like smoke, lingering in the air.

I think of Johnny Cash’s song, “Redemption Day:” “There is a train/that’s heading straight/to heaven’s gate.../and on the way, child and man/and woman wait...for redemption day.” I always envisioned the video for that song would be filmed by Baz Luhrman, focused on a single platform of an old train station, with Cash sitting there on the bench. The station began as a little country stop for carriage; as time passes, the man sits, and around him, it grows up into a city, then into a grand station, then into a subway, then into something we cannot imagine in the future, until finally, it crumbles, it is fallen and dusty, and then reverts back to the land again. All long, Cash is joined by spirits along the way, mostly slaves, vagabonds, cast-offs, but also the suffering of all stripes and walks of life, watching and waiting, so that even though the station changes, by the end, the field is full of souls, in grainy black and white.

The steam engine that passed early on gives off the smoke. But the smoke of the time remaining lingers. Does it choke? Does it merely hide what is yet to come? Or is it just a vapor - ?

Ecclesiastes speaks of the smokiness of our lives. “Life is but a breath,” declaims the Preacher, and life but lyrics on the wind. Yet, life is a breath. What future remains, what time is left, is the Spirit’s time. The flaming furnace could be Daniel’s friends’ trials, meaning that for Israel, the time was near. But on Pentecost, the next day to which we the Church look, the flaming furnace was not an implement of torture, designed to punish those who would not commit the king’s idolatry. Rather, what fell were the flames of the heavenly King; the disciples were in the midst of God’s fiery furnace, being taught the right worship of Christ. They were in it together, not alone; and instead of an angel, which is what the friends and what Ezra receive, we the Church are given the flaming tongues and the purification of the Holy Spirit.

The time that remains is the Pentecost time. It is the time of the Church.

But we would do well to remember that the time of the Church is smoke. The Church, and with it, my vocation and calling, are not eternal. The people within, certainly, are and will be. But the Spirit’s future is such that time will one day expire. And with it, this story must come to an end. This is not to say that eternity will not have its own version of a time-less plot. But this time, this existence, this smoke, it will pass. The Church would do well to learn Wisdom of this.

I would do well to learn Wisdom of this. The time that remains in this short life is to be Spirt-time, not self-time. It is smoke regardless. But will it be the smoke of the furnaces of idolatry, violence and punishment? Or the sweet fragrance and clouds of incense of a life of worship, peace, and prayer?

The revelation that time remains yet, but that it is smoke, is an exhortation. We are already spirits, made by the Spirit, walking and haunting a world that will one day pass away. We are, to be sure, embodied spirits, just as our Church is visible and has form and density. This is Cash’s train. It is also a furnace. That the Church should be described as a furnace deserves its own meditation, which for now, time does not allow. It could be a burning furnace of love, which provides heat and warmth to the freezing and destitute. It could also mean that the Church, like our lives, is often something we must suffer, something that the Spirit must save us from, that when we walk amidst its flames, it is the Spirit that must preserve us from smoldering. Praise be that such preserving is also refining.

We live in an age that is smoke, lingering behind the passing of a locomotive. May I never forget it, nor the flame that caused that veil, the flame that rests on the altar of my heart, concealing and revealing, watching and waiting.

"Hope, Ye Who Enter Here"

(The following is the main body of a sermon for Holy Saturday I wrote during my first year of divinity school, about Jesus meeting Judas in hell. (The full, lamentably long, text can be found here). May it bless your Great Sabbath.)

~

...I have noticed that most churches have changed the pertinent line of the Creed to “he descended to the dead.” Talking about Hell has never been an easy or a very popular topic. Unless we are using the old fire and brimstone routine to scare salvation into some wayward sinners, we generally do not like to think of a place of eternal torment and hopelessness, let alone talk about it with our modern, liberal congregations. Nor do we feel entirely comfortable with or able to reconcile the idea that a God of Love would effectively condone and preside over the eternal torture of people He Himself created and knit together in their mother’s wombs. CS Lewis himself wrote, “there is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture, and especially of our Lord’s own words.”

Many of us feel the same way. If we had it our way, everyone regardless of what they had done in life would be given a second chance at heaven. None of us wants to see anyone, not even our worst enemies, endure the kind of torments dreamed up both in the Bible and by the theologians and the poets. And yet, the hard truth is that we cannot with integrity read the Scriptures nor affirm their authority without accepting that, no matter how we choose to imagine it, Hell is an inescapable reality; for some, tragically so. Hell represents for us the state in which souls are eternally separated from God, and, at the very least, and perhaps, at the utmost worst, experience the unbearable pain of that separation for the rest of time.

And yet, into the darkest, most desolate and abandoned place we can imagine, yet even here Christ Jesus travels during his sojourn in the flesh. Into the place of man’s self-condemnation, into the place of utmost separation, down into the furthest depths of damnation, destruction, despair and death beyond death, Christ dares to leave His footprints in the molten sands. That which he did not undergo, he could not redeem. Even in Hell, Hades, and Gehenna, Jesus walks.

St. Peter, who knew well the hell of self-condemnation, testifies to Jesus’ infernal itinerary in his first letter. He shares with us that after his death, Jesus braved even Hell to make “a proclamation to those spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey.” He goes on to further clarify that “this is the reason the Gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.” For the Jews, Sheol was a place where the souls of the dead awaited the final judgment day; those who were great sinners waited in unbearable agony, while the great patriarchs and prophets rested “in the Bosom of Abraham.” The early Christians would have understood that Jesus descended in order to share the Gospel with all those people who had not lived to hear it personally from His lips.

Here, once again, the text is incredibly silent on a most important and mysterious point. Once again, I ask the Spirit’s guidance upon my imagination as we walk with the Savior into the realms below.

I imagine Jesus walking through the gates of Hell. As He passes through, He looks up and notices black words etched in yet blacker stone: ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE. Unimpressed, and with a furrowed brow, He continues onward. The expanse before him is bathed in a pale green light. Shadowy people walk about as if lost, gazing around with panicked, exhausted eyes. A sob grips him, and a wince, as he hears a voice cry out from somewhere beyond the light in the shadows. His heart is rent with a paroxysm of pity. My lost sheep, He thinks. I am coming.

He walks along the river called Styx until He comes upon a hill. On that hill were seated Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Samuel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel; Rahab, Rebekah and Ruth; John the Baptist, Jonah, and Jeremiah; and with them, all the hosts of Israel’s past. And while their brows are beaded with the sweat of waiting, their eyes are nevertheless closed, their heads bowed, their lips moving silently in prayer. Ah, yes, thinks Jesus. It is the Sabbath. Even here, without the sun, my people know to quit their agony and their grief and, in spite of hopelessness, remember and keep holy the Seventh Day.

Jesus kneels down besides them and prays. When the time comes when on earth the Torah would be read, he stands up and greets them with a joyful blessing, “grace and peace be unto you all.” The shades are taken aback, and look at one another, puzzled. Who is this one who speaks as if He had authority, they wonder. But He continues, reciting from memory the same verses with which He began His ministry in the world above: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Their eyes glow, for the first time in many many years, with Hope, as He smiles knowingly and says, “today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Release to the captives. Let the oppressed go free!”

Several hours later, the souls of Israel are assembled at Hell’s gates, prepared to march under the banner of the Lamb. As they are preparing to depart, Jesus sees a figure, crouched by the side of the river. “My brothers and sisters, hold for one more moment,” he says, and makes his way over to sit beside the soul sitting there holding his knees to his chest.

“Hello Judas,” he speaks, softly, yet full of longing and joy. “Oh, I wondered when you would show up,” comes the tart reply. Judas does not turn his head, but continues to stare coldly into the darkness beyond the river. “It is good to see you again, my friend,” tries Jesus again, placing his hand on Judas’ shoulder. “Yeah, well the only good you can do would be to get lost. Haven’t you tormented me enough already?” answers Judas. “Judas, my son, we are leaving now. I know you heard me speaking earlier. You are welcome to come with us; I desire so badly for you to come with us. Please, turn, and come.”

Judas stares ahead; he recalls the texture of the cold silver coins he held in his hands, and the warmth of Jesus cheek as he kissed him in the garden. He remembers the final, sweet release of the rope closing about his neck; his heart recoils at the agony he is trying so hard to hide; he will not show weakness now. He steels himself, and keeps his silence.

Jesus sighs, and for a moment, a tear trembles on the corner of his eye. But he lets out a deep breath, and rises. “You know where to find us, Judas, when you are ready.” He turns, and walks towards the great army of saints. As they march forth from the gates, Jesus looks back over his shoulder at the gates of Hell; the first two words of the ominous greeting have been crossed out. He nods in approval at his divine defacement, and leads Israel forth on her new Exodus under the new banner: “HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.”

I do not know how Judas’ story ends. For it is not my story to tell, nor my ending to know. But I can hope. And I dearly hope that at some point, if not that day, then a little while later, when he had finished grieving, that he rose from that river side, turned, and accepted the invitation given to him.

I can hope for those in Hell. And I can hope in the midst of Hell. In descending into the abyss on that first Holy Saturday, I know that Jesus felt the same way that CS Lewis did about Hell, and that He had the power and the authority to do something about it. The text tells us that Jesus “preached” to those in Hell; Jesus writes a blank check in the amount of the Gospel and offers it to all captives who long for freedom.

But just as on earth, in Hell, the Gospel is preached. It is an invitation, and this means that it must be accepted. For those not persuaded by the love that moves the maker of the universe to enter into the very depths of the most damnable place in existence, I am not sure there is any other invitation they ever would accept...

~

...But the Good News of Holy Saturday is that the invitation is finally universally extended. The Gospel is preached, even in and especially to the very darkest places of creation. Before even the miracle of the Resurrection, Christ reaches out to those who are closest to annihilation. The fires of hell are put a matchstick compared with the burning passion of our God-in-Love, who desires that everyone know how much they are loved and desired. The power of St. Paul’s words to the Romans rings out: “for while we were yet helpless, yet at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…in this God demonstrates His love for us.”

Jesus asks us to take the time for our Sabbath rest on this most Holy of Sabbaths, to stop and to remember those whose grief cannot be consoled, those whose pain is profound, those whose isolation and separation and self-condemnation we ourselves would rather pass over during this Passover season. In the grief of the living, as well as in the torment of the dead, we see a world still aching, still longing, still burning, without hope and without direction under Hell’s banner, ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE. Hell’s Banner proclaims itself from Pilate’s palace, from Judas’ tree, from Peter’s pitifulness, from Magdalene’s house of ill repute. Hell cries out, “Arbeit macht frei” in the signs of Auschwitz, Hell rears its head in the proclamation “Whites only” in the places of segregation and prejudice, Hell shouts with fury in the gunshots that claim lives by the shooter’s own hand, Hell leaps with ecstasy in the back alleys of Durham and Denver and Damascus and Delhi where the homeless are left to rot, ignored, abandoned, alone, condemned. Hell whispers its seductive lullaby to death row inmates, to AIDS patients, to burned out businessmen and exhausted stay-at-home housewives and suburban nihilists, to disillusioned pastors in stagnant congregations and to child soldiers in Sudan and grown up soldiers in Iraq. Hell writes with broad strokes across the creation and below: Abandon all hope. Be condemned.

Yet Christ takes on even our own self-condemnation. Christ is sovereign even over Hell, over Death and the grave. “He descended into Hell” is not an empty phrase in a rote creedal statement. It is the essence of the Gospel.

To all who struggle under oppression from the Hell of corrupt governments, he proclaims, “Hope.” To all who labor under unfulfilling jobs, who toil under self-hatred, who reject grace again and again and choose routs of self-destruction and self-indulgence, he proclaims, “Hope.” To prostitutes, to drug dealers, to gangsters, to CEOs and professional athletes and rap artists and country singers and to generals, junkies, professors and pastors, he proclaims this Gospel, “Hope.” And even to those in the darkest depths of Hell, who have condemned themselves by their choices in life and their refusal in death, to those who linger in darkness, in desolation and in despair, to them, even in spite of their sin, yes, them especially, Jesus walks with them, he bids them, “HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” Hope, because even here, I am with you, and will not forsake you.

“He descended into Hell” is nothing less than the proclamation that even in the very fires of Hell, the Gospel is proclaimed and the invitation extended. Hell is no longer the last stop, the final destination, the last word – but merely a stop on Christ’s journey of redemption, for all those who long for freedom, who will turn, and accept the Gospel of the invitation of Grace. It is Holy Saturday that enables us to truly say: “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

A Good Friday Allegorical Meditation

(As a devotional practice lately, I've developed a variation of the monastic practice of sortes biblicae, whereby I open to as random a passage as I can manage, and then attempt to read it allegorically - which is not antithetical to faithfully. Such relies on a strong belief in providence, as well as in the Totus Christus. More on that another time. Below is my meditation for Good Friday.)

~

Wisdom 7.29-30 - She is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail.

Excels every constellation. No pattern we can witness in nature, no “natural theology,” no admiration of a beautiful sunset, can fully encapsulate or exhaust the depthless beauty of the Creator’s Wisdom. Any time we are tempted to say, “its enough just to skip the Eucharist and go fishing,” it is not so much that we are wrong, as that we partake in an almost-truth. Yet we do not receive its fullness. The transfigured host which we eat is not merely sign, but also reality, a reality-sign, a sacrament, that reveals to us the true nature of all reality, charged as it is with God’s grandeur. Yet without that reference point, we cannot truly know the meaning of finitum capax infiniti. Without it, our ship is lost in dark water.

So strange, that Wisdom should be fully revealed in the moment that recalls and re-presents the sacrifice of the cross. On this Good Friday, the scandalousness of which Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1 should not be taken for granted or lost. Nature’s beauty is revealed as much by her death and resurrection as it is in her splendor. One might say the latter is impossible without the former. And this makes little sense. Annie Dillard laments the sacrifice of a billion aphids for the sake of a tiny remnant and the prolongation of the species. The savage mercy of the natural way of things can hardly be called grand, even if it cannot be called mean. Such is the foolishness that must be endured by we Greeks, the scandal to the Jews.

And so Christ is crucified to make sense of all crucifixions. It is Christ’s death that is more beautiful than the sun, and perhaps this is why, on this Friday, the sun hid her face in shame, and darkness covered the land. But the text also speaks of the darkness as evil - which would make the light not merely created radiance, but the very splendor of God. As Dr. Marcus helped us see, in Mark’s Gospel, the darkness is the triumph of the demons. Or so they think. The tide that has been rising throughout the gospels finally crashes upon the poor, wretched body of Jesus until it is utterly racked upon the jagged rocks of shadow. The beauty of this radiance and the constellations made visible by His Incarnation, by the revelation of the logos in which “all things hold together” (Col.1.17f) fails. That is why we cannot make them the measure of the divine. All created things must die. Even the stars will burn out one day. And then, what of our patterns, paradigms, progress, predictions?

But Wisdom remains, because she created, creates, and can create again. And the new creation bursts forth in the resurrection. The old patterns have burned out; new stars and a new sun has risen, and so, the possibility of a new navigation of reality, a way to see blindly in the midst of the darkness by the light of the Son who dwells in our hearts. Nature groans, but now in anticipation, now it can see its death and its toil and its transience not as meaningless cycle, but as created beauty, as poetic plot, with beginning, middle, end, and new beginning. Now, is the creation transfigured. But such is visible only to those who kneel before the consecrated host, who grasp in faith and in wonder the depth of the love of God for us, for all humanity, for all of creation.

To say that wisdom is more beautiful than the sun is not to denigrate the celestial bodies, nor to trifle with the rocks and trees or to ignore the robin’s eggs, nested or broken open upon the ground. Rather, in the space opened up by the Father’s Wisdom through the mystery of Good Friday, a path is made, a Way, by which we can tread the road to Golgotha, and, on the way, begin to see the true beauty of everything. For we see things as mortal, as on-their-way-to-death. We cease to grasp for eternities of our own invention. We let go of immortality. We become contingent, created, mortal. And in acknowledgement of these limits, we find new space opened up in us to see the Creator’s hand. We do not need or desire for things mortal to be what they are not; instead, we desire for the Creator to be who He is, and thus open up the space for New Creation, and for the Future Resurrection the Spirit makes possible.

This world will die; but in Christ, the new creation, the resurrection, the life eternal, and the voyage of this life, have only just begun. Here the Savior bid us through the poet: "Come my friends, tis not too late to seek a newer world."

Against Wisdom evil does not prevail.

Kill the Bible

Timothy Beal, whose recent book The Rise and Fall of the Bible seeks to deconstruct our cultures of Bibliolatry, writes in a provocative recent article:

The ninth-century Zen master Lin Chi is remembered for saying, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him"—meaning kill your attachment to the Buddha. Nurturing an attachment, even to the master of detachment, prevents spiritual growth.

Attachment to the cultural icon of the Bible is similarly debilitating. It's a false image, an idol. If you see it, kill it. The Bible is dead; long live the Bible. Not as the book of answers but as a library of questions, not as a wellspring of truth but as a pool of imagination, a place that hosts our explorations, rich in ambiguity, contradiction, and argument. A place that, in its failure to give clear answers and its refusal to be contained by any synopsis or conclusion, points beyond itself to mystery, which is at the heart of the life of faith...

In response, we can buy another values-added Bible and keep the dream alive. If at first we don't succeed, buy, buy again. The Bible biz is at the ready. Or we can give up on the Bible altogether. Very many do, as if it stands or falls based on how well it fits our inadequate idea of it. Or we can begin to let our attachment to that idea die.

Within the framework of a commitment to faith in Jesus Christ through the Church, I couldn't agree more. But while Beal claims the bible "canonizes contradictions" which leads to its own constant self-deconstruction and demythologization, I prefer to think of it as "inspired diversity," or "canonized conversation-" the means precisely by which the Living Spirit of God's grace preserves us from idolatry and self-delusion. For more, see my previous posts outlining theses for reading scripture, particularly theses 2, 4, 6, and 7.

09: Proverbs 6:6, or, Look to the Spider...

(This little guy stayed put for the whole Eucharistic Liturgy. I had to ward off mucho temptation to resist taking a shot with my cell during the elevation of the host...Communing with nature communing with Communion...somewhere in here, the analogy of being breaks down...or does it?)

Similitude?

This is just really gorgeous:

08: Bachelor Life

"Life was a hawk in the sky..." - Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

Mortenson's Ghost Schools: Parables of Postmodernity?

In an article on the impact of the the Greg Mortenson scandal on Asia's women, Michelle Goldberg, of the Daily Beast, writes:

The problem is that simply erecting school buildings is far from enough. Teachers need to be recruited and paid. Textbooks need to be bought. Funds for maintenance need to be established. Parents need to be motivated to let their daughters go to school, which can be done in various ways—one program in Bangladesh that rewarded parents with cash payments doubled female school enrollment. These sorts of programs require local collaboration and sustained, long-term support. And that, it seems, is where Mortenson has failed. “CAI has become proficient at erecting schools off the beaten path, and Mortenson deserves praise for that,” Krakauer writes. “But filling those schools with effective teachers and actually educating children turns out to be much more difficult than constructing schoolrooms. On this front, Mortenson has delivered far less than he has professed.” Krakauer describes “ghost schools”—schools the Central Asia Institute built but then abandoned.

Mortenson became as famous as he did because people love the idea that one intrepid humanitarian can solve intractable problems in the world’s most desperate places. Schimmelpfennig calls it the “White in Shining Armor” approach to development. It makes for good stories, but it usually doesn’t work. In nearly every country in the world, there are people on the ground trying hard to improve things in their communities, and the most successful programs work through them. The Global Fund for Women, for example, takes applications for grants in any form and any language. It supports organizations like the Afghan Institute of Learning, which began by running underground girls schools during Taliban rule, and which has since trained more than 7,000 female primary school teachers. The problem isn’t that the world of development lacks real heroes. The problem is that they’re rarely the ones we hear about.

I pray that the good that comes of the scrutiny paid to Mortenson's operations awakens us all from the dreams of our postmodern slumber in which inspiration and commitment continue to be divorced, with the former becoming a substitute for the latter. Otherwise, Mortenson's "ghost schools" may become not only parables of our good intentions and social justice consumerism, but also, our reality. As Goldberg points out, it may not be only the straw men of our ideals that are consumed, but also, the lives of the very people - especially the women - who fuel the fires of our blind quest for meaning, divorced from personal transformation and sustained, sacrificial commitment.

A Palm Sunday Allegorical Meditation

(I've lately been in the habit of choosing random verses on which to meditate using allegory as a framework. This past Saturday, I happened to be given Matthew 21.5, just a day before Palm Sunday. I share my meditation below.)

Matthew 21.5 - Tell the daughter of Zion, “Look! Your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey; and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

I was baptized twenty-nine years ago, and Palm Sunday is the anniversary of my baptism. The Lord came and comes into the midst of the ruined city of my soul, the city of peace that has become a den of thieves and a market place of deceit, riding on the humble means of Word and Sacrament. In this baptism, this event which happened to and with me years ago, the Creator of the universe took up residence in the temple of my heart. Christ has made me the bride of his flesh. The Spirit is yet within me.

Tell the daughter of Zion. As in Zecheriah’s day, much has changed. This passage was once a prophecy, a hope, prediction, and longing. Zion, even then, had been fallen, destitute, ravaged. Sin ravages and shreds and turns to rags. Even so, Baptism built a bountiful kingdom, a second temple of Solomon. The daughters of this golden age, living as prostituted slaves in the shadow of occupation, needed to be told. My heart needs to be told, “remember your baptism.” Not just the sprinkling - but the grace in which I surely do stand, in the midst of destruction.

Look, your king is coming to you. My king. Not my lusts. Not my greed. Not my lies. But the King. The Lord. Jesus Christ by his Holy Spirit. He IS coming. He is my future, and he is the space opened up before me as I journey towards it. Except that he is also rushing to come to meet me. There is something very Song of Songs, something very sensual, in this prophecy. O Daughter, your Bridegroom is coming. Receive him into yourself. He comes humbly. But he comes to ravish you, and to restore you.

Donkey and colt. Does it really matter whether there were two beasts or one? Yet, there are ways in which I must “see” history differently, must learn to recognize the marks of the divine activity, in light of the promises and the realities of God. One writer, favoring Isaiah, might focus solely on the donkey, to the exclusion of the colt. Matthew, reading Zecheriah, noticed trailing behind Jesus a colt. And so, the vision of the Church, engaged in reading many different texts and hearing many different promises, can perceive the entirety of God’s revelation in ways greater than the parts’ sum.

Why do I shut myself off from those who can help me to see more? More of my sin, certainly, but even more promising, more of the promise? The gates of the temple that I am meant to be are shut, guarded by the hoarding claws of the money changers, in whose clutches birds do not sing from within their cages? The nations, the gentiles, the outcasts are kept out, barred from entrance. Profits, interest, and security are the name of the game. Prophets are not allowed. The Spirit’s flame is extinguished.

But humbly comes the Lord, on the donkey of Baptism and the colt of the Eucharist, or, if you like, in the Word of the donkey and its offspring, the Sacraments. Or, if you like, the humility of Christ’s earthly body, which begets the ugliness and awkwardness of Christ’s churchly and sacramental bodies. Either way, he comes in abject humility, in ugliness insulting to reason, in ordinariness transfigured. He comes to our offense, even as, at the gates, we laud him. He comes, but not alone, for he comes with us, for us, to us.

I am baptized into this humble reality. My words are meant to be donkey and colt, not war horse or chariot. Christ enters me, not in victory, not in triumph as Pompey or Titus, but as David writ small, to make me David repentent, and David eternal. This happens to fulfill the prophecy of the Son’s entrance into Zion, not as military commander or zealot, not as activist or radical, not as doctrine or as dogma, but as humility, as the Glory of the Lord, YHWH’s Shekenah returning to be with his people.

But first, of course, the temple must be destroyed. Unlike the days of Ezekiel, when the Glory simply settled on the tabernacle, this corrupted palace must be cleansed, and ultimately, leveled. But it is not annihilated. It is resurrected. The dead bones will rise again. The glory of our flesh that was made originally good is drowned in the waters of the Baptism of Christ’s death on the cross, so united with him in his resurrection, and on the rubble of earthly ambitions, pride, and flesh, is raised a temple of Living Stones, the Church, our new body that we are to live in and out of, and the Spirit comes to dwell in us. Grace transfigures nature - but only through death and resurrection.

Can these dry bones live again? Tell the daughter of Zion, Look! Look, like Matthew looked, and saw differently than Mark, because he was reading a different text. Look, together as a body of Christ, at the many promises, gifts, and acts of God in our midst, for the many ways God comes to us incarnate and externally, that internally we may be renewed! Look! The King comes, not as conquerer, but as Bridegroom, tenderly and humbly, to lay his kiss upon your forehead! Look! See! Raise a palm branch, follow to the temple, to the table, to the garden, to the cross, and to the tomb. Look! You are raised to new life! This is the journey of Lent, of Baptism, lived again and again! Look! It is the journey of God with God’s people, but now, it is the journey of GOD-WITH-GOD’S-PEOPLE, here in the flesh, so that in our flesh, we might also journey WITH GOD.

I was baptized, twenty-nine years ago tomorrow - give or take a few days. The shame that is sin means that Christ’s glorious re-entry must be repeated ad nauseum, that it is no longer an initial wedding night, but another attempt to give it a try. Christ comes, humbly, on colt and donkey. But just because the pristine is gone, does not mean the mercy, grace, and forgiveness are exhausted. Daughter of Zion, Look! This time, do not set up shop with the money changers. This time, do not wave empty palms and cry to the Son of David, when the one who comes is the Son of God. This time, do not sleep in the garden. This time, do not deny him to the world. This time, do not betray him for the love of money. This time, do not fail to recognize him, as did Pilate. This time, do not shirk from testifying to truth. This time, be crucified as one of the thieves. This time, be buried.

This time, arise. For the King of Glory comes in state. This time, may I be the donkey, or the colt, on which he rides. Amen.